1998 National Research and Development Conferencehttp://hdl.handle.net/10500/244762019-05-25T15:22:40Z2019-05-25T15:22:40ZDesign patterns for user interfacesWarren, PRViljoen, Mhttp://hdl.handle.net/10500/254442019-05-16T01:00:40Z1998-01-01T00:00:00ZDesign patterns for user interfaces
Warren, PR; Viljoen, M
Petkov, D.; Venter, L.
This work reports on 23 third year student' s projects in which the user interfaces (UI) were found wanting. We show in which ways we regard the UI to be in error. However, an examination of the available literature on UI design indicates that advice needed to correct these errors simply was not accessible. It goes on to describe what is different about design patterns and why this approach is a promising direction to pursue for UI design. Finally it presents a single pattern which would correct the kind of problems our student designers experienced.
1998-01-01T00:00:00ZNon-orthogonal ray guardingSanders, Ihttp://hdl.handle.net/10500/254352019-05-15T01:00:41Z1998-01-01T00:00:00ZNon-orthogonal ray guarding
Sanders, I
Petkov, D.; Venter, L.
In an earlier paper the notion of a ray guard --'- a guard that can only see along a single ray, was introduced. The ray guarding problem is in siting the fewest possible such guards so that they guard all adjacencies (shared edges or parts of edges) in an orthogonal arrangement of adjacent non-overlapping rectangles. In the earlier paper the problem was restricted by requiring that the direction of sight be parallel to one of the Cartesian axes. This problem was shown to be NP-Complete by a transformation from the vertex cover problem for planar graphs. This paper discusses the more general problem where the rays are not restricted to being orthogonal, the same ray can thus cut both horizontal and vertical adjacencies between adjacent rectangles. The problem is shown to be NP-Complete by a transformation from pla­nar vertex cover. The problem of siting ray guards to cover the adjacencies between adjacent convex polygons is a more general case of the non-orthogonal ray guarding problem and the NP-Completeness proof can be extended to this problem as well. Current work is on devel­oping heuristic algorithms for non-orthogonal ray guarding of adjacent rectangles and for the non-orthogonal ray guarding of convex polygons.
1998-01-01T00:00:00ZCharacteristics of high-performing information systems project managers and project teamsSmith, DChttp://hdl.handle.net/10500/254332019-05-15T01:00:30Z1998-01-01T00:00:00ZCharacteristics of high-performing information systems project managers and project teams
Smith, DC
Petkov, D.; Venter, L.
Projects, and their success, are vital if organisations are to produce new products and
services. The key players in IS projects are the project manager and the project team.
This paper discussed ongoing research of two projects - one that attempts to identify the
key characteristics of the I.S. project manager and the other which researches the attributes of a high-performance project team. At this stage, the paper analyses the research literature. (The empirical component of the research projects will be reported at a later stage).
1998-01-01T00:00:00ZError analysis in selected medical devices and information systemsRandiki, Ehttp://hdl.handle.net/10500/248162018-11-17T13:06:37Z1998-01-01T00:00:00ZError analysis in selected medical devices and information systems
Randiki, E
Petkov, D.; Venter, L.
The purpose of this paper is to identify and analyse error in selected medical devices: the Datex cardiocap and the capnomac Ultima II. These are both anaesthetic machines used to monitor patients in theatre. A secondary purpose of this paper is to investigate how the present error management technique used in the medical world affects the improvement of the interface in medical equipment.
1998-01-01T00:00:00Z